Marlene Gebauer has been after the writers on 3 Geeks to produce a Podcast. After months… (years?) of talking about it, we finally decided to do it. So, let me be the first to invite you to listen to the new “The Geek In Review” podcast:
The inaugural episode covers Marlene’s attending a law firm management conference and my take on some of the strategies legal information providers are implementing on exiting the book business, and creating a de facto operating system for legal information.
Zena Applebaum and I conducted a phone interview where she talks about her recent post, My Non Life.
We’ll try to do these on a regular basis. If you have any suggestions… just let us know. We are really excited about launching this extension of 3 Geeks!
If you like it, subscribe and share it with your friends: https://anchor.fm/geekinreview/ or you can find it on iTunes or Google Play.
We’ll also get the podcast on other platforms, so stay tuned.
Special thanks to Kevin MacLeod for his original music made available via Creative Commons.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome, everybody, to the inaugural episode of The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:14] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. Many of you will know us from the long-running blog, Three Geeks and a Law Blog, and our involvement in the legal information and law librarian profession. The Geek in Review is a brainchild of Marlene and has been something that’s been in the works for a number of months now.
[00:00:28] Marlene Gebauer: So the idea behind The Geek in Review podcast is for Greg and I to bounce some ideas off of each other, take a look at current happenings in the legal information field, and engage with others in the legal industry.
[00:00:39] Greg Lambert: And just as with Three Geeks, it’s really going to be about things that we find interesting, and we hope you’ll come along for the ride.
[00:00:45] Marlene Gebauer: So enough of the introductions, Greg. Let’s just jump in and start the show.
[00:00:48] Greg Lambert: That sounds good to me. Let’s get this thing started.
[00:00:58] Marlene Gebauer: For those of you who don’t know us very well, I’m coming to you from Houston, Texas.
[00:01:02] Greg Lambert: And I’m joining from a small town in New Jersey. New Jersey girl. And on Twitter, you can follow me at GLAMBERT or Glambert.
[00:01:11] Marlene Gebauer: That’s the best Twitter handle ever. I mean, you can’t beat that, Glambert.
[00:01:15] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I love it. It’s one of the advantages of being an early adopter. And in fact, Marlene, today is my 10th anniversary of actually being on Twitter.
[00:01:27] Marlene Gebauer: Well, that’s very impressive. Greg, do you get a prize? Do you get confetti, anything?
[00:01:32] Greg Lambert: Yeah, you know what I got? I got nothing. I got a little note in my Twitter account that today was my 10th anniversary. And there you go.
[00:01:40] Marlene Gebauer: Well, you know?
[00:01:41] Greg Lambert: But the last five years, at least, have been very enjoyable because I don’t– you and I have talked about this, so you know about it, but maybe those listening in. Glamberts are also the name of people that are fans of the pop star Adam Lambert. So they’re all Glamberts. He’s fronting Queen right now. Oh, man. When they find out that it’s a 50-year-old dude that’s not nearly as good looking or suave as Adam, they have a fit. And so I’ve been having fun with that.
[00:02:17] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I bet. I bet. All right.
[00:02:20] Greg Lambert: Let’s see if our listeners have to get a hold of you on Twitter.
[00:02:22] Marlene Gebauer: Mine is not nearly as interesting, but it’s @GabeauerM, and I’ll spell it that, G-E-B-A-U-E-R-M. And of course, we both blog at Three Geeks and a Law Blog.
[00:02:33] Greg Lambert: Yeah, that’s kind of our bread and butter, besides our day jobs.
[00:02:36] Marlene Gebauer: That’s true. All right.
[00:02:39] Greg Lambert: So those of you listening in, we’re very new to this whole making a podcast thing. So we’re learning as we’re going, and I think you’ll probably see that when you listen to my phone interview with Zina later on.
[00:02:50] Marlene Gebauer: It’s like, yeah, please, please, please be kind to us. There’s a few pops and things and maybe some rustling paper. So paper rustler.
[00:02:59] Greg Lambert: You’re a paper rustler. I edited out most of the paper rustling.
[00:03:04] Marlene Gebauer: But if any of you are techies out there and have any thoughts and want to give us some help on that.
[00:03:10] Greg Lambert: Yeah, just reach out to @GabeauerM.
[00:03:14] Marlene Gebauer: Because I’m the only one who’s going to read it. So Greg has a phone interview with Zina Appelbaum and discusses her recent blog post on being a non in the legal industry. For those of us who work in law firms as well as others in the legal industry, this is really somewhat of a sore point for many of us. And Zina will be talking about the benefits of having so-called nons involved in your legal teams.
[00:03:38] Greg Lambert: Gotta love the nons. Yeah. It’s a great interview. She is such a great person. And I’m glad we were able to get her up first.
[00:03:45] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly.
[00:03:46] Greg Lambert: Yep. Marlene, I understand that you hopped the short ride from small town New Jersey into the big city of New York this week and attended something cool.
[00:03:53] Marlene Gebauer: I did. I did. I took the very long train ride into New York City and, you know, from the country. And I was attending the HBSC and Sandpiper Future of Law Firm Management Conference. And they had a great presentation yesterday. One of the takeaways I had was one of the nice things about these events is that you get to have a large group of people of the same caliber in the same room talking about what you normally don’t get. So we had a lot of CEOs from some big law firms, and they were talking about client needs and the industry and what some of the challenges are and how they see them coping with them. Part of what was interesting is that you often think, oh, big law, you know, they’re all kind of handling stuff the same way.
[00:04:41] Greg Lambert: But it’s all, you know, obviously asked by somebody who doesn’t work in big law.
[00:04:47] Marlene Gebauer: And you know, what you find is that, yes, while there, yes, there are similarities, which, you know, I’ll highlight, there’s definitely differences. There’s definitely different approaches that were discussed. You know, some of the firms were taking very, you know, top and bottom line approach, looking at it that way, where, you know, where their growth was, where their growth wasn’t. You know, really just focusing on the growth areas and sort of scaling back in other areas. You know, some of them were looking at more local markets, really building up local markets in areas where they, the local market actually needed something. Some were saying, you know, you know what, we do what the clients want. You know, we service our very top clients. Those are the ones we focus on the most. And so whatever they want, we do that for them.
[00:05:28] Greg Lambert: They do pay most of the bills.
[00:05:29] Marlene Gebauer: That’s true. It was an interesting point and something that kind of kept going around because folks are saying, well, you know, if you’re working on those top 25, if there’s other ones that, you know, that you don’t want, we can, we will be happy to take them. That was another point of discussion. Clients are less loyal. That was the, that was kind of the impression that there’s a lot of opportunity for clients who are, you know, air quotes, dissatisfied to be able to move around. That was another key factor in terms of strategy.
[00:05:58] Greg Lambert: Well, competition’s always good. I think, you know, the old days of the handshake on, on the golf course and you’re forever. My client are dead and gone. Not to say that that still doesn’t happen because it does, but you know, good. It’s good that clients are more mobile and are willing to pick up and leave if they’re dissatisfied. So that sounds like fun time in the big city.
[00:06:17] Marlene Gebauer: So Greg, you mentioned to me that you had yet another epiphany this week with a trend toward legal information providers. So why don’t you tell us about it?
[00:06:27] Greg Lambert: Really when you hear it, it’s less of an epiphany than it is more of a, Oh, why didn’t, why didn’t I realize this before? So I was, I was on the phone talking with Lex Machina’s Josh Becker. Great guy. We were, we were talking about analytics and halfway through the conversation, it just really dawned on me about some of the things that the legal information providers are doing. And I, I know you’ve got a good interview coming up and are going to talk about this and more in depth, but really there was two, two things that really just came to light. And, and one is that print is finally being killed off by the vendors and, and they are working extremely hard to get out of the book business.
[00:07:08] Marlene Gebauer: So I think you see that a lot with Bloomberg BNA. I think you’re, you’re going to see it more with Thomson Reuters, with, with LexisNexis. So we’ve, we’ve been talking about everything is online and print is dead for probably 25 years now. But we’re starting to see it, right?
[00:07:25] Greg Lambert: I’m seeing a big shutdown of print. And so I don’t want to jump into your area of expertise that you’re going to be talking on in another episode. The second thing that popped into my head was what the vendors are doing now is essentially creating an operating system for all of their products. So you can think of Windows, Apple’s, Linux with almost in the same way that you think of Thomson Reuters, Lexis, Bloomberg, and that they are really making an effort to create a single platform. And all of these products that they are acquiring are moving into this platform and away from secondary sources, away from secondary platforms or individual platforms into this really centralized system. Now, again, probably shouldn’t be that big of an epiphany, but it’s really come to light on how hard these vendors are working to create a uniform platform to sell all of their products.
[00:08:26] Marlene Gebauer: It’s a really interesting thought because, again, you know, part of my upcoming interview with Gene O’Grady, we’re going to be talking about this business model in terms of tying everything together and looking at it as an operating system as opposed to a bunch of individual things, really kind of unique. You have to be able to use this one platform in order to use all of the content and new content that’s coming out. with Gina Grady, we’re going to be talking about this, you know, this, this, this business model in terms of tying everything together and looking at it as a, you know, an operating system as, as opposed to a bunch of individual things really kind of unique. You have to be able to use this one platform in order to use all of the content and new content that’s coming out.
[00:08:51] Greg Lambert: Yeah, it’s going to be a definite paradigm shift for us.
[00:08:56] Marlene Gebauer: And you got to wonder how that’s going to play into the discussions that we’ve, you know, been having, you know, at least in the library community about sole vendor and moving in that direction.
[00:09:06] Greg Lambert: Well, and quite frankly, this, this is a direct response to the single provider. I do want to say that my library school professor was very happy that I was able to work in paradigm shift into the, into the office.
[00:09:21] Marlene Gebauer: I was impressed. I was impressed.
[00:09:23] Greg Lambert: I know. I know. I haven’t, I haven’t used that in a, in a long time. So well, speaking of the interview with, with Zena, I’d say let’s, let’s roll into it.
[00:09:34] Marlene Gebauer: I think that’s a great idea.
[00:09:35] Greg Lambert: Let’s go. Joining us today is Zena Applebaum. Zena is one of, if not the leading competitive intelligence professionals in the legal industry. So Zena lives in Toronto, but is joining us today from Chicago. Welcome to the Geek & Review, Zena.
[00:09:59] Zena Applebaum: Thanks Greg.
[00:10:00] Greg Lambert: You wrote a heck of a blog post last week and talked about my non-life. For those of us that work in law firms, we totally understand what it is to be a non, but really I want to give you a chance to define. So what do you define as a non?
[00:10:16] Zena Applebaum: So I mean, it’s really something that was defined for me. I don’t think I thought of myself as a non until I started working in law firms about 16, 17 years ago. And really nons are anybody who is a non-biller. So a non-fee earner, somebody whose time is not billed out to the clients. And even some people whose time is billed out to the clients, like librarians, for example, their time might get written off or what have you, but you’re sort of a non. Anybody that is described or doesn’t come with a legal degree. And there’s even this gray area of people who are knowledge managers or legal practice management type people who are non-practicing lawyers still get defined by that non verbiage.
[00:10:54] Greg Lambert: Well, why do you think that is? Why are we defined as nons?
[00:10:58] Zena Applebaum: I mean, I think historically they were the people who helped the firm run maybe, but weren’t critical to weren’t critical to what law firms were actually trying to do. But I think certainly since 2008 and even before then, that culture has completely shifted. I think law firms as, as we know from Three Geeks and a Law Blog, but also from the myriad of other law blogs and pundits out there, the legal industry is completely turning on its head right now. The nons are actually playing a much more critical role in the success of law firms.
[00:11:29] Greg Lambert: So I hear a lot of times they compare, say, the medical industry to the legal industry, where they’re not called non-doctors, you know, they’re called administrative staff, they’re called nurses. They have a number of different titles out there, but I’ve seen, especially in the legal press, where we get defined as, quote unquote, non, usually the term is non-lawyer, whenever they define something that they can’t wrap their heads around and is not a biller. But it’s not just about being a non-lawyer, is it? I think your article goes a little bit further in there. What other nons are there out there?
[00:12:06] Zena Applebaum: Yeah, so I mean, I think for me it’s been really interesting being a competitive intelligence professional, which in and of itself is sort of something that sits at the intersection between strategy, business development, and knowledge management. I have been very influenced by the librarian community or the knowledge, the information management professions, and there I’m a non-librarian. So I spend a lot of time saying to people, no, I’m not a lawyer. No, I’m not a librarian. And every single time I say it, I kind of get a funny look like, well, what are you doing here?
[00:12:38] Marlene Gebauer: One hand, it’s funny and I should have run away a long time ago, but my fit, my skin is a little bit thicker than that. And I’ve actually managed to have a pretty good career as a result of having a different perspective, which was really what the article was all about.
[00:12:49] Greg Lambert: Yeah, and I think back to a time when I was sitting in on a practice group meeting and it was part of the strategy to have our research staff in there to find out what was going on within the practice groups and watching one of the attorneys look around and say, why is the librarian here? We’re here, we’re here to help you make sure that you’re doing a good job. So you state sometimes, let me, let me quote a piece from the article itself. I really liked you. You state that quote, being a non can sometimes get lonely and occasionally it can feel like you are the only one who sees what should be so obvious to everyone else around you. Unquote. What do you think gives the non the ability to see things that
[00:13:31] Zena Applebaum: lawyers, librarians, technologists can’t see? I think that you’re not mired in it the same way. I think sometimes we’re lawyers in particular and the, and the legal field, but also librarians in their own way. And technologists to get very myopic, they get very focused on what’s in front of them and they forget that there’s a world beyond what they’re looking at. So, you know, I, I shake my head at the fact that I sometimes want to hit my head against a wall at the fact that for example, clients and law firms, despite everything that’s being written, despite everything that’s being said, despite all of the pushes for innovation and all of the people being named to the college of Law Practice Management, firms are still not turning on their heads. The innovation is still really slow. The change away from hourly billing is really slow on the client side as much as on the law firm side. It’s a model that doesn’t work, it’s a model that’s failing and yet we’re still letting in associates after associates after associate into this failing business model and nobody’s really standing up and making a change. Now, I understand the economics of it, I understand that for of law practice management, firms are still not turning on their heads. The innovation is still really slow. The change away from our hourly billing is really slow on the client side as much as on the law firm side. It’s a model that doesn’t work. It’s a model that’s failing and yet we’re still letting in associates after associates after associate into this failing business model. And nobody’s really standing up and making a change. Now I understand the economics of it. I understand that for partners who are currently in leadership roles, there isn’t really an incentive to make that change, but for clients, there is an incentive. And so I can’t help but wonder why nobody’s actually trying to make that change on a broader scale. And it’s a very similar thing with librarians and a similar thing with technologists too. I mean, technologists tend to get wrapped up in how amazing the technology is to change the world, but they forget that they’re talking about people and there’s a human element and you can’t just implement technology and walk away and assume that adoption and user habits will change. And so all of these very articulate professions kind of forget that there’s a world beyond what they see in front of them.
[00:15:21] Greg Lambert: We’ll be back in a minute with part two of our interview with Zina Appelbaum, our CI guru, talking about my non-life, where we’ll talk more about diversity and not necessarily the kind of diversity that you immediately think of. I’d like to take a few seconds and encourage the legal information professionals listening to this podcast. Come and join me in Baltimore from July 14th through the 17th for the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference. As you probably know by now, at least I hope because I’m about to leave, I’m the current president of AALL, so do me a personal favor and make an extra effort to get out to Charm City this year. If you don’t want to do it for me, that’s fine. Do it because we have an awesome keynote speaker, Mr. John Waters. So I’m certain that John will bring a lot of excitement to the room on a Sunday morning. So visit AALLnet.org slash conference for more details and registration information. Come to Baltimore where we will definitely.
[00:15:50] Marlene Gebauer: you know, because I’m about to leave, I’m the current president of AALL. So do me a personal favor and make an extra effort to get out to Charm City this year. If you don’t want to do it for me, that’s fine. Do it because we have an awesome keynote speaker, Mr. John Waters. So I’m certain that John will bring a lot of excitement to the room on a Sunday morning. So visit aallnet.org slash conference for more details and registration information.
[00:16:16] Greg Lambert: strive to meet this year’s theme of going from knowledge to action. And now back to part two of our interview with Zina Appelbaum. Sometimes we’re successful in spite of ourselves, I guess.
[00:16:32] Zena Applebaum: Totally.
[00:16:33] Greg Lambert: I really only use like one quote from Richard Susskind and I use it over and over and over again. And that is, sometimes it’s hard to tell millionaires that they’re doing something
[00:16:42] Zena Applebaum: wrong. Totally. I think what’s really telling is that this one, I mean, I write for the blog all the time and I usually get some great feedback, but this one post has gone pretty crazy, which says to me that it’s resonating with a lot of people. It says to me that a lot of people feel like they have a different perspective and then it’s time for those different perspectives to be heard. One of the lines or one of the elements that I touch on in the piece is around diversity and inclusion, which has become a very serious topic and one that should not be ignored in
[00:17:13] Greg Lambert: law firms and libraries and everywhere else, even in technology companies. You know, we’re schooling from a different generation and we need to acknowledge all of that diversity and we need to include people. But I think it also goes as far as including a diversity of thought and making sure that when we’re building out teams and that we want to be successful, that includes bringing in people who you maybe don’t think are an obvious choice to bring into your organization.
[00:17:35] Zena Applebaum: And that education and having, you know, the only difference between me and a lawyer to some extent is that they went to school for four more years. And really, if you consider my master’s degree, they didn’t go to school for four more years. They maybe went to school for two years longer.
[00:17:50] Greg Lambert: Well, I think here in the States, they just have to go for three years.
[00:17:55] Zena Applebaum: Yeah. So, you know, I think diversity and inclusion should include diversity of thought. And we need to remember that. We need to remember when we’re running businesses and maybe that’s one of the problems with both librarians and lawyers is that they forget they’re actually running businesses and that they’re part of businesses. But a big part of being successful in that realm is making sure that you’re getting different perspectives, making sure that you’re not just following your unconscious bias, that you’re actually looking beyond what you see in front of you.
[00:18:23] Greg Lambert: I like the thought process there, that it’s not just diversity, things that you normally think of, but rather diversity in thought, diversity in experience. Coming in with your own business acumen, being able to apply that into an industry which is, you know, run by some pretty good lawyers, but being a really good lawyer doesn’t always equate to being a really good business person.
[00:18:47] Zena Applebaum: No, I like that. Yeah, and we need to move at the pace of change. And the pace of change since 2007, certainly from a technology standpoint, and that’s impacted everything else, has been quite rapid. And so I think law firms are starting to feel that pinch. And I think libraries too, quite frankly, in terms of some of the transition they’re going through with more digital transformations and more information being ubiquitous and available to all kinds of people.
[00:19:12] Greg Lambert: So what’s gonna tip the scales, ’cause I can almost assure you that the clients are not going to be the ones arguing for this because that’s what was supposed to happen after 2009 was the clients, it was a client’s market and they were going to tell us how to run our business. And we’re now 10 years, almost 10 years out and not much has changed. I mean, there’s, there’s been some tweaking around the edges, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think that there’s been any significant change in the market itself. So who’s, who’s going to tip scales? Is it going to be up to the to come in and kick some butt and say, It’s our turn?
[00:19:53] Zena Applebaum: So, I think it’s going to be, to some extent, the nons are going to shed the light. Although, like you quoted Siskin, it’s hard to tell. Millionaires, they’re doing something wrong. But I think the millennials and Generation Z are really going to change things because I don’t think they’re going to work the same way. They’re already not working the same way the boomers and the generation before them work. They don’t have the same partnership aspirations. They don’t have the same sense of the business model. And I think that’s really when we start to see them in GC roles and we start to see them in heading towards the holy grail of partnership. I think we’re going to see a diverse or a diversion, rather, of tactics. I don’t think that that resonates with them. I don’t think that lifestyle resonates with them. And I think that’s where the diversity of thought, even amongst lawyers and amongst librarians, is really going to change the face of lawyering.
[00:20:42] Greg Lambert: I totally agree with you. Despite the fact that Milbank is now throwing $190,000 at incoming associates, I think that’s just the last ditch effort of trying to fit the new square pegs into the old round hole.
[00:20:58] Zena Applebaum: Yeah, and we’re seeing it with law schools being pressured more and more to provide business acumen courses, to provide the business of law, not just the practice of law. You’re seeing it at Cornell. You’re seeing it with Ryerson’s new approved law school up in Toronto. It’s coming. I think the new generation is going to be a big part of the story.
[00:21:16] Greg Lambert: All right, senior partners, you’ve been warned. It’s coming. Thank you, Zena, for joining us. You can follow Zena on Twitter at ZappleCI. That’s Z-Apple-C-I. That’s a great Twitter handle there. So thank you again for joining us. And hey, Zena, you know what? You’re our first guest, so if the podcast fails, you know, it might be all your fault. So, you know, no pressure. So thanks again for joining us, and I’ll talk to you later.
[00:21:45] Zena Applebaum: Perfect. Thanks, Greg. Have a good one.
[00:21:53] Marlene Gebauer: Well, that does it for the first episode. Everyone made it through in one piece. I thought it was fantastic. Very thoughtful. Zena offered some really critical points that we should all take away and think about.
[00:22:05] Greg Lambert: Yeah, once again, Zena shows that she’s much smarter than I am.
[00:22:08] Marlene Gebauer: She is.
[00:22:09] Greg Lambert: Yeah, thank you. So I will tell you, the highlight of the interview for me was this. When Zena went totally Canadian on me and said, Generation Z, I know as soon as she said it, she was on the other end going, oh, God, he’s probably over there just giggling his butt off.
[00:22:25] Marlene Gebauer: Which you were. Which you were.
[00:22:27] Greg Lambert: And I was. Inside.
[00:22:28] Marlene Gebauer: On the inside. On the inside. Yeah, I’m like, I would sing the Canadian anthem, but I don’t know the words.
[00:22:33] Greg Lambert: It’s in French, isn’t it? I know it starts with, oh, Canada, and then I just saw the rest of it. That’s right.
[00:22:37] Marlene Gebauer: You know, but I did want to actually make a real point about the interview. I think that clients are going to have an impact on the non coming into play and getting more involved in work and decision making, but maybe not in the way that we’ve heard in the past. Clients are always saying in RFPs and in conferences and whatnot that, you know, they want innovation.
[00:22:58] Greg Lambert: They want a good price. They want efficiencies.
[00:23:04] Marlene Gebauer: It’s going to be up to the firms to figure out how that’s going to work. They’re not going to tell us how that’s going to happen. And the needs of the business model are going to encourage the change.
[00:23:13] Greg Lambert: So I knew I was going to catch some grief, probably not just from you, but from other people about my comment about we’re still waiting for the clients to tell us what to do. But at the same time, there are a number of things that have been going on. You had the ACC value chapter. You had the ACC value challenge, which I think has kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit, but now you’ve got Clock, which is going just gangbusters and people are really, you know, riding that train. So maybe it will come from the clients, but I think you’re right. It’s not, you know, we had this vision, I think, for the last decade that until the clients squeaked, they must be okay. And I think that you’re right.
[00:23:56] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, it’s going to give us a lot of opportunity for creative thinking and creative solutions. So I think that’s great.
[00:24:02] Greg Lambert: Hey, Marlene, we just finished our first podcast. I know. Well, depending on how many people actually listen to it, this might be the inaugural edition and the finale. So we’ll see how it goes. Thanks for joining us on our inaugural episode of the Geek & Review. I’m Greg Lambert.
[00:24:21] Marlene Gebauer: And I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:24:22] Greg Lambert: All right. We’ll see you later.
[00:24:24] Marlene Gebauer: Catch you later. Bye.
[00:24:26] Greg Lambert: This has been the Geek & Review. Special thanks to Zena Appelbaum for joining us today. Also thanks to Kevin MacLeod for his original music, which he made available via Creative Commons. Thank you, Kevin.